If for the next fifty years the population of these American States shall continue to increase as during the last fifty, we shall exceed a hundred millions; and in a century, allowing the same ratio of increase, the population will equal that of the Old World. Here, then, is a continent to be filled with innumerable millions of human beings, who may be happy through our wisdom, but who must be miserable through our folly. We may disregard such considerations, but we can not escape the tremendous responsibilities rolling in upon us in view of the relations we sustain to the past and the future. We delight to honor, in words, those heroes and martyrs from whom we have received the rich boon of civil and religious liberty. Let us then, in deeds, imitate the examples we profess to admire, and contribute our full quota, as individuals and as a generation, toward perfecting and perpetuating the institutions we have received, that they may be enjoyed by those countless millions who are to succeed us in this broad empire.
"In this exigency," to adopt the language of an enlightened practical educator and eminent statesman, "we need far more of wisdom and rectitude than we possess. Preparations for our present condition have been so long neglected, that we now have a double duty to perform. We have not only to propitiate to our aid a host of good spirits, but we have to exorcise a host of evil ones. Every aspect of our affairs, public and private, demonstrates that we need, for their successful management, a vast accession to the common stock of intelligence and virtue. But intelligence and virtue are the product of cultivation and training. They do not spring up spontaneously. We need, therefore, unexampled alacrity and energy in the application of all those influences and means which promise the surest and readiest returns of wisdom and probity, both public and private.
"When the Declaration of Independence was carried into effect, and the Constitution of the United States was adopted, the civil and political relations of the generation then living, and of all succeeding ones, were changed. Men were no longer the same men, but were clothed with new rights and responsibilities. Up to that period, so far as government was concerned, they might have been ignorant; indeed, it has generally been held that where a man's only duty is obedience, it is better that he should be ignorant; for why should a beast of burden be endowed with the sensibilities of a man! Up to that period, so far as government was concerned, a man might have been unprincipled and flagitious. He had no access to the statute-book to alter or repeal its provisions, so as to screen his own violations of the moral law from punishment, or to legalize the impoverishment and ruin of his fellow-beings. But with the new institutions, there came new relations, and an immense accession of powers. New trusts of inappreciable value were devolved upon the old agents and upon their successors, irrevocably.
"With the change in the organic structure of our government, there should have been corresponding changes in all public measures and institutions. For every dollar given by the wealthy or by the state to colleges to cultivate the higher branches of knowledge, a hundred should have been given for primary education. For every acre of land bestowed upon an academy, a province should have been granted to common schools. Select schools for select children should have been discarded, and universal education should have joined hands with universal suffrage."[56]
In the simplest form of civil government, there must exist a legislative, a judicial, and an executive department. But no expression of the national will in a system of laws can be sufficiently definite to supersede the necessity of a perpetual succession of Legislatures to supply defects, and to meet emergencies as they arise. However well-informed men may be, and however pure the motives by which they are actuated, all experience hath shown that subjects will come up for consideration that will strike different minds in a variety of forms. This, in a popular government, gives rise to opposing parties. Every man, then, in casting his vote for members of the Legislature, needs to understand what important questions will be likely to come before that branch of the government for settlement, to have examined them in their various bearings, and to have deliberately made up his opinion in relation to the interests involved, in order to vote understandingly; otherwise he will be as likely to oppose as to promote, not only the welfare of the state, but his own most cherished interests.
The same remark that has been made in relation to the legislative department will apply to both the judicial and executive, and to the general government as well as to the several state governments. When the appointed day arrives for deciding the various questions of state and national policy which divide men into opposing parties, there can be no delay. These various and conflicting questions must be decided, whether much or little preparation has been made, or none at all. And, what is most extraordinary, each voter helps to decide every question which agitates the community as much by not voting as by voting. If the question is so vast or so complicated that any one has not time to examine and make up his mind in relation to it, or if any one is too conscientious to act from conjecture in cases of magnitude, and therefore stays from the polls, another, who has no scruples about acting ignorantly, or from caprice, or malevolence, votes, and, in the absence of the former, decides the question against the right.
However simple our government may be in theory, it has proved, in practice, the most complex government on earth. More questions for legislative interposition, and for judicial exposition and construction, have already arisen under it, ten to one, than have arisen during the same length of time under any other form of government in Christendom. We are a Union of thirty states; a great nation composed of thirty separate nations; and even beyond these, the confederacy is responsible for the fate of vast territories, with their increasing population, and of numerous Indian tribes. Among the component states, there is the greatest variety of customs, institutions, and religions. Then we have the deeper inbred differences of language and ancestry among us, our population being made up of the lineage of all nations. Our industrial pursuits, also, are various; and, with a great natural diversity of soil and climate, they must always continue to be so. Moreover, across the very center of our territory a line is drawn, on one side of which all labor is voluntary, while on the opposite side a system of involuntary servitude prevails.
If, then, general intelligence and popular virtue are necessary for the successful administration of even the simplest forms of government, and if these qualities are required in a higher and still higher degree in proportion to the complexity of a government, then are both intelligence and virtue necessary in this government to an extent indefinitely beyond what has ever been required in any other. And especially is this true when we consider that our government is representative as it regards the people, and federative as it regards the states; and that, in this respect, it has no precedent on the file of nations. We hence require a double portion of general intelligence and practical wisdom. But men are not born in the possession of these requisites to self-government, neither are they necessarily developed in the growth from infancy to manhood. They are the product of cultivation and training, and can be secured only through good schools opened to and enjoyed by all our youth. The stability of this government requires that universal education should precede universal suffrage.
Under a free government, the intelligence of the people, coupled with their virtue, will be found to be a sure index to a nation's prosperity, and to the individual and social well-being of all who enjoy its protection. God is a being of infinite wisdom and goodness, and no part of his government can be successfully administered except upon the principles of knowledge and virtue. The success that attends a nation of freemen will depend upon the extent to which these are cultivated, and the universality of their dissemination in the body politic. While the cultivation of these will increase the safety of the government, their neglect will hasten its downfall.
Judge Story, in a lecture upon the importance of the science of government as a branch of popular education, has well remarked, that "it is not to rulers and statesman alone that the science of government is important and useful. It is equally indispensable for every American citizen, to enable him to exercise his own rights, to protect his own interests, and to secure the public liberties and the just operations of public authority. A republic, by the very constitution of its government, requires, on the part of the people, more vigilance and constant exertion than any other form of government. The American Republic, above all others, demands from every citizen unceasing vigilance and exertion, since we have deliberately dispensed with every guard against danger or ruin except the intelligence and virtue of the people themselves. It is founded on the basis that the people have wisdom enough to frame their own system of government, and public spirit enough to preserve it; that they can not be cheated out of their liberties, and they will not submit to have them taken from them by force. We have silently assumed the fundamental truth that, as it never can be the interest of the majority of the people to prostrate their own political equality and happiness, so they never can be seduced by flattery or corruption, by the intrigues of faction or the arts of ambition, to adopt any measures which shall subvert them. If this confidence in ourselves is justified—and who among Americans does not feel a pride in endeavoring to maintain it?—let us never forget that it can be justified only by a watchfulness and zeal in proportion to our confidence. Let us never forget that we must prove ourselves wiser, better, and purer than any other nation ever has yet been, if we are to count upon success. Every other republic has fallen by the discords and treachery of its own citizens. It has been said by one of our own departed statesmen, himself a devout admirer of popular government, that power is perpetually stealing from the many to the few."